The Sexy Accident

This Kansas City-based band's second LP is just as driven by catchy melodies and smart, real-life lyric-writing as their first, 2006's Tourism. But they're tighter: a forceful, even fiery power-pop trio.

The band's singer/songwriter/guitarist, Jesse Kates, sings with a devotion and sensitivity that's sometimes surprising; his voice will rise above the rock, catch air. His guitar will too, alternating between lightness and crunch.

The songs switch too from the rough to the gentle, by telling stories sad and sweet. Within them people make mistakes, hurt each other, and express their love, through road trips and a shared knowledge of each other's eccentricities. This musical and lyrical balancing of hurt and tenderness is to the album's benefit, making it a very human sort of rock 'n' roll album. - The Big Takeover

To say that music should have no monetary value is a little silly. After all, release a pirate copy of an album people are supposed to pay for, people flock.

Release an album free-of-charge, people give it the wide-birth of a sneezing Mexican.

They can't all be bad though, right? Well, time for another test case: meet The Sexy Accident. Now download this album by heading to their music download page.

Now read along.

We're somewhere in the territory between Teenage Fanclub and Mull Historical Society here with a greater onus on those "driving rhythms" so beloved of press departments.

Front-man Jesse Kates throws an impressive amount of gusto at the vocals. Hearing his voice strain, run dry of air and gasp for breath between and during notes adds a huge amount of energy and humanity to what could have been a typically lifeless performance.

Retro stylings may place them beyond the focus of the typically narrow-sighted indie-kids, but it's very much their loss. Although we must take time to rue the somewhat sagging nature of the mid-section of Mantoloking, we'd still consider it a home-run/six/whatever sports analogy you wish to use.

First song on the album "I Tried Again" scores major points for never losing its momentum throughout a giant swing of a chorus and the cleverly structured guitar riffs. Taking the baton from that song, "I Just Need My Car" quickly solidifies The Sexy Accident as a band adept at those trickiest of rock conceits: melodies. The background vocals feel exactly as if they emanate from the back of the room, rather than the right side of the mix.

"Buy Me Out" may be a little too pub-rock at its initiation, but the sweeping bass-line soon takes us back to the land of the epic rock band. The rather audacious use of counter-pointed vocals at the end really does warm the heart as well.

Seven-point-five minute opus "All Surface" is anything but and "Merry Christmas To You" brings a Coral vibe to a downbeat Christmas anthem.

We'd not recommend that the band start building an awards shelf just yet, but this is one we'd likely hold as being worth its price at HMV, that it's completely free-of-charge makes it an essential download. - Strangeglue

Kansas City pop-rock group the Sexy Accident's new EP is a self-contained world of cheating and leaving lovers, presented three ways. At the center is the high-drama version, the six-minute "In Heaven". She's going to marry someone else. They meet one last time, every breathless second filled with importance, at least in his mind. His thinking is no joke: "I'd even love his kids / ‘cause they're yours and his". The backing vocals tilt the song towards melodrama, even soap opera, as do the build-ups of guitar, which almost suggest a demonic ending. That ending makes the song feel, at least to me, like a true-crime drama of over-the-edge obsession, not as innocuous as it first seemed.

The first and title track, "Now That She's Gone", is the lighter, sweeter version of this. He misses her but, you know, he does yoga and exercises and keeps moving along. There's an upbeat tone, singer Jesse Kates singing, "now that she's gone" with a grin. It's hard to get a grasp on the exact story, perhaps because our narrator doesn't want to face all of the facts. "The story's not quite as simple as I try to make it out to be," he admits, "it's no fair to want from her / what she can't count on from me." From that line it seems like he may have been stringing her along, that her leaving wasn't a cold, heartless act. "My heart is broke / but it's gonna mend," he declares. But what about her heart?

The third song, "Savage Love", tells the same basic story from a sleazier angle. The sex that wasn't happening in the other songs is here, as the song starts, "I miss lusting after you / maybe more than I miss you." It's the catchiest song, though the spirit of the song isn't as light as its sound, even with crashing sound effects that make us feel like we're in a B movie. Camry Ivory's backing vocals almost poke fun at the song's narrator, in an observing-from-a-distance way, especially her bouncy echo of "car car car" after his lyric, uttered with a self-conscious sense of dirtiness, "I know monogamy is hard / but so was f___ing in your car." The song's title is both a reference to the syndicated newspaper column and a supposed philosophical statement: "savage love / is all there is." Is that true? The first two songs sure seem to disprove the notion. - Erasing clouds

Though only three tracks long, the Sexy Accident's Now That She's Gone teems with sonic and lyrical detail. It captures a fleeting, stunning portrait. And fleeting is the operative word because Camry Ivory — who joined seven months ago — will soon be the longest-tenured member besides founder Jesse Kates. (The Sexy Accident is slimming down a member to a quartet and unveiling a new rhythm section.)

The addition of Ivory's keyboards and background coos to Kates' local band fills out the pop tunes with more panache. Kates' lithe tenor narrates meaty stories preoccupied with heartbreak. Though it's the oldest trope in the songbook, Kates makes his heartache ballads distinct.

The title track — which recalls the new-wave soul of Graham Parker — finds Kates having trouble letting go, promising, My heart is broke, but it's gonna mend. The cinematic, nearly six-minute "In Heaven" captures the guilt and longing of an illicit affair between onetime best friends; and the punchy, sample-laden rave-up "Savage Love" is incited by a condom wrapper on a car seat.

It's a smart, catchy, fulfilling course, despite its appetizer size. - The Pitch